Goddess (24 page)

“Yeah. He wanted to give me one with a heart on it.”

“Mackenzie, sweetie, I need to tell you something,” I said as I took her hand for the walk home. “I’m going to sleep at Jake’s mom’s house, just for a little bit.”

She looked at me, eyes wide. “I am not having a sleepover with Jake,” she declared. “It wouldn’t be approximate.”

“Appropriate,” I corrected. “No, I’m the one having the sleepover. It’s just for a little while, while Dad and I figure some things out.”

She paused on the sidewalk and looked up at me, her face uncomprehending. “What things?”

“Sometimes when you’re married you don’t always get along or you do things that hurt the other person. Then you need a time out while you figure things out.”

She nodded, as if the whole situation had suddenly become clear. “You know what I do when I’m in timeout?”

“What?”

“I think about something happy… like wild monkeys.”

~*~

That evening, Matt stayed downstairs with the girls while I packed an overnight bag in the bedroom. I could hear Lily and him laughing about something. It made me feel like I was standing outside a party that I wasn’t allowed to enter. I pushed the thought aside. I’d have plenty of time to feel sorry for myself later.

When I finished packing, I sat on the bedspread, smoothing it with my hand as if it was what needed to be comforted. I felt a strong desire to lock the door and stay here. When I was a teenager, my room was my sanctuary. I would push a toy box that I had filled with books up against the door to prevent intrusion by my mother. Lying on the bed under my thick comforter in the winter, or gazing out the open window in the summer, watching finches and robins flit between the yard and the tall cornstalks beyond, I felt protected from the pain, loneliness, and turmoil that swirled around my life like water in a rocky stream.

~*~

Trent seemed especially sullen as Van guided me past his impalpable presence to a guest room that felt inappropriately bright and cheery. I sat my suitcase in the corner and sunk into Van’s embrace. “It’s going to be all right, kid,” she assured me. “You’ll get past this and be in a better place.”

The tears began to flow again, even though I felt like my insides had already been wrung dry. “I don’t know what that place looks like. It was a lot easier keeping my two lives separate than trying to figure out how to bring them together.”

“Just give it time.”

~*~

The next morning my phone alarm woke me after a fitful night’s sleep. I immediately texted Lily and Anna to let them know how much I missed them but they didn’t respond. I called Mackenzie just before she was due at the bus stop. “When are you coming home?” she asked. Her imploring voice brought my tears back to the surface but I did my best to sound chipper. “I’ll be there when you get home,” I assured her. “Don’t let Tyler give you a tattoo.”

Arriving on campus, I went to Marilyn’s office to finish up some details connected with the publication of my translation. As desperately as I wanted to see him, I forced myself to avoid Ashland’s office. I didn’t want to focus on my possible future career or our relationship and I was afraid that feeling his arms wrapped around me would influence the decisions I had to make.

I returned home by lunchtime and was startled to find Matt sitting in the kitchen, a beer in one hand. He looked tired and worn, as if he had aged ten years since yesterday.

“You didn’t go to work?” I asked, lingering in the doorway.

“I went to the office, sat down at my desk, then got up and caught the next train home.”

I observed him for a moment. He hadn’t shaved and his dark stubble made his face look even more dispirited. “Is there another beer?” I asked.

Matt retrieved a bottle of Guinness from the refrigerator and popped the top for me. I sat across from him. “I thought we were reasonably happy,” he said. “I mean, we weren’t perfect. Our marriage could have used some improvements, but what marriage couldn’t?”

“Then why did you sleep with Angela?”

He turned his beer bottle in his hand, staring at the label as if he thought he could find the answer there. “Ego. She wanted me. It made me feel good. But I still love you. Nothing has changed that.”

“I still love you too, but I just don’t know if that’s enough.”

He looked up at me, his eyes dull and tired. “It’s a place to start.”

I took a swig from my beer, steeling myself. “Matt, you’ve been a good husband. You work hard to support our family, you’re a good dad to our kids, you’ve only forgotten our anniversary once.”

“Twice.”

“I can’t explain this to you in a way you, or most people, would understand, but I’ve discovered something amazing inside of me, something I’ve repressed since I was a child. I don’t want to lose you or hurt our girls, but I need to explore it. I need to find out who I really am.”

“With another man?”

“It’s not just Ashland. I need to explore my connection to Magoa. I need to find out what it means.”

“You mean your tattoo? That’s what started all this? It’s just coincidence, Julia.”

“I don’t know. It feels so real, like something I’ve been searching for all my life.”

“If you told that to a psychiatrist, he’d have you on anti-psychotics in a millisecond.”

“It’s just too difficult to explain, Matt. I feel like I’m on a spiritual quest.”

“But Ashland Stewart understands?”

“Yes,” I replied quietly. “Matt…” I hesitated. I wasn’t going to share this yet. It would only complicate things further. “I’ve been offered an opportunity to go to North Korea for the summer and work on the dig.”

Matt sat his beer down hard, sloshing the contents onto the wooden table. “You want to spend the whole summer with this guy while I stay home and take care of the kids?”

“It’s a professional opportunity. It’s going to give me a lot of experience that I could put on my resume after I finish school.”

“So you want a divorce? Because I’m sure as hell not going to sit around here while you’re off… off with another man.”

I stared at the small puddle of beer on the table. “I’m not sure what I want, Matt.”

“It’s not like there’s a lot of options.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“What’s that supposed to me?”

“It means there are other options.”

“Like what?” His tone had become more belligerent. I wondered how many beers he had before I came home.

“We could have an open marriage.”

He stared at me, mouth wide. I was as surprised as Matt by what I had suggested because I had never seriously considered it before.

It took awhile for Matt’s jaw to function again. “That would be real interesting. ‘Mommy’s not coming home tonight because she’s fucking her boyfriend.’”

“Matt—”

“Fuck you!” Matt slammed his empty bottle on the table and stood up. I watched him calmly. “What the hell has gotten into you? You used to be a normal, sensible person.”

“But that’s not all I am. It never was.”

He shook his head back and forth slowly as if it was a bobblehead. “You do what you want, Julia,” he said in a low voice, simmering like a bitter soup. “I just want you out of this house.”

CHAPTER 18

I drove aimlessly through familiar and unfamiliar streets, my mind a farrago of thoughts and emotions. I felt like I was trying to contain a hundred marbles dumped onto a sloping table. Matt, Ashland, my children, myself… there was no way to save us all from tumbling into a painful morass. The decisions I had already made had consequences. Now it was time for more decisions and more consequences.

Finally, I pulled over to the curb and called Ashland. “Can we meet at your house?”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” he promised.

I parked in back by the garage, though I wondered if there was any reason to hide anymore. Ashland arrived a few minutes later and led me inside by the hand. We said only a few perfunctory words before mounting the familiar wooden stairs to his bedroom. I appreciated his perceptiveness, how he knew what I needed and the way I needed it. I undressed quickly, as did he. It was warm, so he opened the French doors and pulled off the comforter. We slipped under just the sheet and he held me, offering gentle kisses on my hands and face while I cried. We spoke little, communicating through fingertips, lips, tongues, and eyes. When the tone and pace of my breathing shifted subtly he knew it was time.

I wasn’t as wet as normal, but with some gentle persuasion, he slipped inside me. We lay side by side, arms intertwined, moving as one. This time, my release was like gas bubbling to the surface, freeing itself to dissipate into the atmosphere, acknowledged only by closed eyes and a gentle moan.

He came immediately after; I could feel him fill up the empty space inside me. We lay quietly as we listened to the untroubled singing of birds and the chatter of squirrels.

I gazed into his calm, reassuring face. “Ashland…”

“Yes.”

“I’m hurting people and I don’t know what to do.”

“Look into your heart. What does it tell you?”

I closed my eyes and imagined myself calming a stormy sea. The pain had been inflicted on my family. No salve could make the wound vanish. I saw myself on a raft now, floating in calmness, fully connected to the universe.

I opened my eyes again and gazed at Ashland. “I want to go to Magoa,” I said.

~*~

I longed for it to be settled then, but of course, it wasn’t. I spent another fitful night in Van’s guest room. When I finally drifted into unconsciousness, I dreamed that I had a fourth daughter, older than Lily, who lived in our basement and only emerged when she was hungry. She was tall, quiet, and sad because she had been ignored all her life. Then Ashland arrived at our door to claim her. “She’s not really yours,” he told me when I let him in. “She’s Adriana’s. I left her with you when she died, but now I want her to come with me to Magoa.”

I woke with a start. The room was dark and unfamiliar. It took me a moment to realize where I was. I cried for the loss of what I once cherished and because I was afraid of the future.

~*~

“I don’t know which would be worse, the pit toilets or the lack of showers,” Van commented over morning coffee.

“Ashland says it’s beautiful there in the summer—lots of wildflowers and incredible sunrises.”

“And don’t forget a hot guy.”

I frowned at her. “As if I didn’t have enough to deal with already, I’m worried about how Ashland will react to having me there. Adriana was the archeologist, not me. I can’t replace her.”

“Do you think that’s what he’s looking for?”

I took a sip of coffee while I considered the question. “No. Maybe it’s just me. I’m looking for an excuse not to go. It seems crazy, leaving my life, leaving my girls.”

“When are you going to tell them?”

I looked up from the murky brown of my coffee. “I don’t know. How do I go from ‘Mommy’s cheating on Daddy’ to ‘I’m running off with my lover for three months?’”

“How many days has Matt been gone over the last 17 years?” Van countered. “And it turns out on a few of them he was fucking another woman. Now it’s your turn. This is the chance of a lifetime. You need to embrace it.”

I smiled. “You sound so confident.”

“It’s easy for me. I’m not the one going.”

~*~

Ashland and I decided to keep my decision under wraps for a few weeks while the situation at home and work settled somewhat. He used back channels to obtain the university’s approval and apply for a North Korean visa. I stayed away from campus so I wouldn’t encounter Elena or the other grad students. Nina said that she rarely saw Elena anyway, but had heard that she and Daniel were now an item. I was relieved. While I didn’t believe that she was over Ashland, I hoped that Daniel’s relaxed kindness would distract her from doing further damage.

I continued my transitory existence, sleeping at Van’s, going home after Matt got the girls off to school and left for work. I spent most days pretending everything was normal in our empty house, taking CC for long walks when the silence became too oppressive. I met the girls after school, made dinner, helped with homework, and returned to exile when Matt arrived home.

Ashland traveled to New York for a week, meeting with Chinese and Korean colleagues to plan the next phase of the Magoa dig and overcome the remaining political hurtles. We texted back and forth whenever he had a few moments.

How are things at home?
he wrote one night.

Difficult,
I replied.
Lily won’t speak to me, Anna pretends nothing is wrong, and every night Mackenzie begs me to sleep at home.

I’m sorry. What are you going to do?

Wait,
I typed.
Try to be strong.

I felt like a somnambulist going through the motions of my unsettled life, letting my pain pour out only when I was talking to Van or Ashland or when I was alone. I desperately wanted to move on and find equilibrium again. Without it, I didn’t think I could step onto a flight to Beijing and then Pyongyang.

“I’m going to file for divorce,” I told Matt. He was bent over his computer at the desk in our home office, where he often spent the evening until I left for Van’s house.

“Fine,” he responded without raising his head.

I lingered in the doorway, not wanting to invade his space, but at the same time needing to lay out all the steps required, like assembling scattered toy blocks into a meaningful form. “I think we should keep the house. It’s going to be harder on the girls if we uproot them. You can live here.”

He raised his head again; pain and bitterness were strapped to his face like a mask. “The girls aren’t staying at his house.”

“He won’t be there. He’s going back to North Korea to work on the Magoa dig.” I hesitated, unsure of whether I should lay this block down. “I’m going too, for the summer. It will be a good experience to prepare for grad school.”

“So you’re choosing your boyfriend over your children.” His eyes grew dark and narrow. “I don’t even know you anymore, Julia.”

It was true. The Julia who had changed countless diapers, who had spent sleepless nights with sick children, who had let herself be subsumed by the rituals and responsibilities of parenthood, would have never done this. Painful doubts ricocheted across my mind but I didn’t want Matt to see how tenuous was my resolve. “I’m choosing myself for a little while. It’s what I need to do.”

~*~

I tried to spend as much time with the girls as possible. I took Anna to her baseball games, cheering her on when she was at bat or in the field, and focusing quietly on her round, sunburnt face even when she sat on the bench. She wasn’t particularly talented at the game, but I noticed for the first time how much she enjoyed its rituals: chomping on a thick wad of gum as if it were chewing tobacco, taking heavy practice swings holding two bats like a homerun slugger, and habitually touching the brim of her cap six times before she stepped up to the plate.

My relationship with Mackenzie was easier to negotiate and at the same time, more difficult. She wanted to spend every waking moment with me. One day I let her skip school so we could dig up the garden and plant asparagus, broccoli, and kale. I knew I would come home to withered plants choked with weeds, but they gave Mackenzie hope for the future and something to keep her hands occupied while she talked. “Why can’t I stay with you at night?” she asked as she dug heaping shovelfuls of compost out of a bag and spread it between the plants.

“I’m sleeping on a little bed. You wouldn’t be comfortable. Besides, this is only temporary, while Dad and I sort things out.”

She wiped her brow, leaving a brown streak across her forehead that looked like an errant comet. “It would look bad at school,” she mused, “when people found out I was sleeping in the same house as Jake.”

“Sweetie, you know I’ll always love you, and I’ll always come back to you.”

She looked up at me. “I know. You’re a mom, after all.”

My most difficult task was repairing my relationship with Lily. She was spending a great deal of time with Chase, whose parents had divorced several years earlier. Her mother was a social worker by day and a yoga instructor at night, while her father lived in the penthouse of a nearby high rise and enjoyed taking the two teens to expensive dinners, serious plays, and other activities that Lily would have never attended with her own parents.

I pressed Matt and he agreed that it would be best for the girls if I came home. I slept in our own guest room, often curled into a fetal position. Every night, Mackenzie tromped down the stairs, dragging a blanket behind her. She would climb into bed with me and press her hot, sweating form against mine. It felt both stifling and comforting.

When she was home, Lily went immediately to her room, only emerging when Chase was waiting out front or for nightly forays into the refrigerator. The few times I encountered her in the hallway, she would brush by me, refusing to even look me in the eyes.

Weeks before my life’s implosion, Lily and I had talked about driving down to a major speed skating competition in Indianapolis. Chase wasn’t allowed to drive out of town, so I had assumed she would want Matt, or perhaps one of Chase’s parents, to take her, but I decided to check with her anyway.

“Yeah, I guess,” she said when I caught her arriving home from school and asked if she still wanted me to drive her.

“Does Chase want to come along? I could get an extra room for him.”

“No,” she said emphatically. “I don’t want him to come.”

I watched her retreating figure slip quickly up the stairs. Perhaps they were having an argument or had even broken up. She was 17 and, considering that my relationships with teenage boys had usually been measured in days or even hours, I thought their longevity should be admired and celebrated.

~*~

One morning after everyone left the house, I went upstairs and pulled a large cardboard box from the top shelf of the hallway closet. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, I opened the top and stared at the treasure trove of unorganized photos that stretched back at least twenty-five years. I measured the outline of their glossy surfaces with my fingertips, enjoying the substantive weightiness that digital photos could never achieve. Here were a thousand happy memories—my three girls building a snowman in the backyard, Mackenzie joyfully wading into the frigid lake, Anna watching a Fourth of July parade from Matt’s shoulders, Lily at her first skating competition when she was seven, and Matt and me smiling at the camera from a balcony in Venice, newly married, our children still just ethereal hope, our future as open and wide as the Adriatic at our backs.

When the photos became a blur beneath my tears, I returned the box and lay down in what used to be my bed. My spider wasn’t there. There was no more waiting. My life was rushing forward inexorably.

I got up and closed the window, muffling the sound of birds and passing traffic. I didn’t want anything to exist beyond the edges of the mattress. But of course it did. I could still see the impression Matt’s head had left in the pillow. He had stayed on his side, even though I wasn’t there.

~*~

Lily pressed her earbuds tightly into her ears as soon as she tossed her skate bag in the back and climbed in next to me. I glanced over at her; she looked tired, her head resting against the door, perhaps worn down by the stress of our family’s turmoil. I knew how important this competition was and I desperately wanted to make things better between us. We rode quietly until we reached the expressway. “Lily, I know this is hard, but we need to talk.”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” she said over the rapid-fire hip hop I could hear pounding in her ears.

“I know. But no matter how you feel about me, I’m going to be your mother for the rest of your life.”

“How profound,” she blurted out. “You don’t even know who I am.”

I could feel sadness constricting my breathing, but I continued on. “You’re right. But you’ve never been one to share what’s inside your heart, so I finally stopped asking.”

“So I’m just like Dad. You give up on us when things get too hard.”

“I’ll never give up on you, and what I did wasn’t about giving up on your dad. It was about discovering who I was.”

“So you were being selfish.”

I looked over at Lily; she had turned her head to watch Northwest Indiana’s industrial landscape rush past her window. “Yes, I was. I’m sorry it hurt you so much.”